The Story of Halloween

Living in Singapore all my life, I have never seen kids Trick or Treating and it always looked like fun on TV. Most Singaporeans like myself don’t really know the origins of Halloween which has become another commercialized holiday. Thought it would be interesting to find out, so I did some research and came across this clip.

I thought this National Geographic documentary video explaining the origin of Halloween was short, sweet and fascinating. Always wanted to know more about the history of Halloween. I was pretty clueless before I watched this.

So Halloween’s a pagan ritual that started 2000 years ago in Ireland, and it was the end of the Harvest season and the Celtic New Year. Later it was known as Hallow’s Eve, due to the fact that the Catholic Church designated November 1st as All Saints Day or Hallowmas. Even the concept of Trick or Treat is explained. Tricks used to be more sinister back then, and the treats were a kind of bribe for hooliganism and vandalism not to take place. Toilet paper in trees is nothing compared to what they did back then. That was my concept of ‘trick’ from what I saw in the movies. When I was younger I always thought trick involved some kind of magic trick and was confused about the toilet paper.